Updated 10:10 am, Tuesday, April 30, 2013

A movement has been building among local Republicans over the past few months to encourage Susan Reed to run for state attorney general in 2014.

Reed, the hard-nosed, four-term Bexar County district attorney, would be the first female AG in the state's history, a historic point that some of her supporters have used to coax her to run, according to GOP sources.

Reed concedes that she's been getting phone calls about the attorney general's race, including a couple from “leading [Republican] party elected people.” While she declined to name the officials, one source told me that Reed backers have enlisted U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and former U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison to persuade Reed.

This under-the-radar draft-Reed effort has been operating on two tracks, with a shared objective but differing motives.

The dominant group is composed of ardent Reed fans, who think her reputation as a prosecutorial pit bull would make her a dynamic AG candidate.

A smaller group has tired of Reed's act and would like her to seek higher office at least partly because it would give new candidates an opening for the office that she has controlled for nearly a generation.

The draft-Reed movement hinges on a probable, but still uncertain, series of moves on the Texas political chessboard. Attorney General Greg Abbott must follow through with his intention to run for governor next year, a plan that could be derailed if Gov. Rick Perry decides to seek a fifth term. (Perry and Abbott don't want to run against each other.)

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Perry will announce his 2014 plans in June, after the conclusion of this year's legislative session. The timing of the announcement could be a signal that Perry won't run again, because waiting until June enables him to get through the legislative session without being perceived as a lame duck.

As for Reed, her DA seat also will be on the ballot next year, and she recently held a re-election fundraising blowout.

Reed did not slam the door on the possibility of running for attorney general, but said “it's not something I'm contemplating.”

She added: “I just think about what I personally derive the greatest satisfaction from doing — and I'm doing it right now.”

Medina takes care of business

District 7 City Councilman Cris Medina's page on the City of San Antonio's website touts him as the CEO and owner of a company called Diligent Mechanical. It goes on to describe Diligent as a “small veteran-owned business enterprise specializing in project management for electrical and plumbing projects.”

Should you happen to seek Diligent's services, however, you will quickly find that their phone number is out of service and their listed address — a small office building on the corner of Fredericksburg and Mistletoe — offers no hint of their presence.

What gives?

Medina says he put the company — which also goes by the name of Diligent Specialty Mechanical — on hiatus shortly after joining the council in 2011 because he wanted to concentrate on the demands of his office.

In 2008, Medina filed an assumed-name certificate with Bexar County for Diligent Specialty Mechanical, the same business name he has cited on personal financial statements filed with the Texas Ethics Commission over the past three years.

Medina says Diligent Mechanical and Diligent Specialty Mechanical are the same entity, adding that he simply decided after a few years to start using the shorter name. But the names were listed under two separate addresses at the same time (including Medina's home in the French Creek neighborhood), and Medina's family also has run a business called Diligent Plumbing out of an address in Von Ormy.

With his business on hiatus, how has Medina managed to make a living over the past two years?

“My wife works, and I do some marketing work for a small health-care company,” he said.

Medina also has billed an unusually large amount of meal expenses to his campaign. Over the last six months of 2012 — a nonelection cycle — he expensed $1,898 worth of meals to his campaign.